Friendship
by Sour Schuyler
Summary: A sappy little story to make Tea Gardner proud. Gag me with a spoon and I'd be happier. T.C. Watch our cute, insecure little Ryou gain what he really needs more than anything else: a clique of friends.
1. Yugi

**Friendship**

**by Sour Schuyler**

**9.6.4**

* * *

"I've found that math tends to never like anyone," Ryou agreed. "It's very picky that way."

* * *

Friend #1

Yugi Motou

Part 1

* * *

"Alright, class." Mrs. Jono, the infamously evil teacher of Domino High school, clapped her hands together. Her perfect red hair shimmered. "I'm putting you in groups of two. You will then list the alphabet, and then think of acronyms that start with each letter. Thirty minutes. This is a major grade. Ready, set... go!" The teacher started pairing off the classmates, who would then frantically scramble to get together and work.

"Yugi! Ryou! You two will work together... Tristan and Joey will work together... Téa and Kaiba will work together..."

Yugi strolled over to Ryou's desk at a fast pace and sat down. "Hi," he said out of breath. "There's SCUBA, MADD, and RYO."

Ryou blinked his beautiful creamy brown eyes like an owl. "RYO?"

"Roll Your Own," Yugi explained breathlessly. "You have any others? That's all that I could think of." Yugi was 5'0", had spiky, tri-colored hair, (red, black, and yellow) and was desperately thankful that he had been paired with Ryou, who had an inventive mind.

Ryou admitted, "We could use computer speak..."

"Right!" Yugi had his pen poised. "So, list some."

"IDK, TY, BRB, YW, LOL," Ryou ticked off on his fingers. "And um..."

"There's a really long acronym that was an official document," they heard Duke boasting. "The USA Patriot Act..."

Ryou eyed Yugi. "Let's just put Patriot Act."

"Got it." Yugi scribbled it down. "Um.. There's H&I."

"And UGI," Ryou said with a satisfied smile, fiddling with the ends of his white hair. Yugi looked up with large eyes.

"What's UGI?" he asked, bewildered that there was an acronym that almost fit his name.

"You Got It," Ryou explained.

"Ah." Yugi wrote that down. "And then there's G2G."

"Of course. And there's..." Ryou scrunched up his face. "Oh! There's Crime Scene Investigation."

"Did you hear that?" they heard Tristan whisper.

"Don't cheat off them, Joe!" Téa Gardner, Yugi's oldest friend, screeched in a scratchy voice. Joey and Tristan both winced.

"But we'll fail..."

"They probably cheated off of us," Kaiba boasted. Ryou smiled weakly. It was a mad rush for acronyms that no one had been prepared for! And yet, he still had other things on his mind... Like what might happen to him when he got home. The Spirit of the Sennen Ring had threatened to break his arm if he told anybody about some guns that he had jacked incognito, but Ryou had promptly returned them with a lie about finding them that morning. So, he was royally screwed by someone who hated royalty. Wah. But, there was no use whining about it. The same things had been happening to him since the 2nd grade, when he received the Sennen Ring. Besides, Ryou was shy and insecure, and didn't really have anybody at this school he could consider a "close friend". Sure, he could've asked Tristan Taylor to bodyguard him for awhile, but that would make him feel even worse than actually breaking his arm.

Life was weird.

"O.I.K.," Ryou heard Kaiba telling Téa. "Option Installation Key." He scowled.

"Techie," he said bitterly, and then, "Did you hear what he said, Yugi? Write that down?"

"Got it." Yugi bit the end of his pen, sickening Ryou just a little bit. "Umm..."

"Let's try some Latin ones," Ryou suggested. Yugi just stared at him. "I take Latin," he elaborated, "and there are some acronyms we use everyday, like AD and EG."

"What about JACK?" Yugi asked.

"What's that?"

"Just Another Contract Killer."

"Cool."

"Yah."

Twenty more minutes later, using their knowledge of Latin, Ryou's knowledge of his mother's doctoring work, and Yugi's small obsession with guns, they had come up with an acronym for every letter except for Z. (Granted, they cheated a lot, but everybody had.) The trembling teens qued for the teacher's desk, they handed in their papers. The bell rang. Kids filed out of the room, heading towards the cafeteria. The first words out of their mouths were averaged to be "bitch".

Yugi and Ryou's paper was on top.

A.D.

B.R.B.

C.S.I.

D.A.R.K.

E.G.

F.A.G.

G2G

H&I

I.D.K.

J.A.C.K.

K.K.K.

L.O.L.

M.A.D.D.

N.O.

O.I.K.

P.A.T.R.I.O.T. A.C.T.

Q.U.I.

R.Y.O.

S.C.U.B.A.

T.Y.

U.G.I.

V.A.

W.I.

X.Y.L.

Y.W.

Z

"Yugi!" The short champion duelist turned around. His large, beautiful violet eyes floated up to his crush's face.

"Yeah, Téa?"

"What did you think of that? Wasn't it hard?" Téa polled, leaning against the locker next to his. Yugi worked on his combination.

"Shouldn't have been for you. You had Seto Kaiba to help you," Yugi prompted. He grabbed a sack lunch out of his small, cubic green locker.

"Yeah, well, that was a joy." Sarcasm dripped from Téa's voice as she rolled her sparkling blue eyes.

"I'll bet." Yugi balanced his binder and his lunch bag on his leg as he attempted to grab something out of his locker.

"Well, we did finish our list though."

"What did you get for Z?"

"ZI; Zoom In."

"Ah, crud. Now why didn't we think of that?" Yugi cried. A person next to him opened their locker, which smashed him in the face. "Oof!"

"Half the class copied off of us," Téa informed him, totally ignoring him newly achieved facial injuries. "I feel like Joseph Sugarman is going to come and yell at us, or something. ...Why does your eye look all bruised?"

"Heh. That's funny, Téa." Yugi finally got the lock back on his locker, and held his binder and lunch sack in his arms. His friend raised her eyebrows.

"...Going to lunch?" she asked. Yugi shook his head.

"No, I'm going to the library. I have math to finish and it's too noisy in the lunchroom. Besides, there's no way I could work sitting next to Joey anyway," Yugi confessed with a small, impish grin he hoped was cute. It was. Téa resisted the urge to giggle and told him she'd see him in class. Then they both parted ways.

Yugi made his way to the dusty library. It was very impressive, with large maple bookcases and ancient computers. The first thing Yugi did, on a whim, was check his horoscope. Miho Nosaka was a big believer in horoscopes, and so she posted them every day from some web site. Yugi's eyes traveled downwards towards the Gemini section.

**Try your hand at something new. Your versatility will attract attention and possibly a new partnership. **

It also said that today's lucky numbers that day were 2, 14, 23, 32, 38, and 41. Yugi, upon speculation, realized that the "23" had significance because that was how many acronyms Bakura and him had come up with. Cool.

Settling down and a large maplewood table, Yugi set down his binder upon the slab of glass that separated the valuable table from potential damages. He took out a worksheet and a pencil and set to work.

**4. If a figure has 4 sides then it is a square**

**a) if a square, then there are four sides**

**b) If and only if there are four sides then it is a square**

**c) true**

**5. If a triangle is isosceles, then it has two equal sides**

Yugi heard the scrape of a chair against the carpet. He looked up to see a startled pale face.

"Oh, sorry," Ryou apologized. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

Yugi shook his head, silky blonde bangs swishing back and forth. "...No, that's okay. What's up?"

"Well..." Ryou stood up and walked around the table, standing on his tip toes behind Yugi to read over his shoulder, despite the fact that he could do this flat-footed very comfortably. "Whatcha working on?"

"Math," Yugi said bluntly. "And it doesn't like me, Bakura, it really doesn't."

"I've found that math tends to never like anyone," Ryou agreed. "It's very picky that way."

"Why do we need math, anyway?" Yugi wondered, tapping his pencil against the table.

"One has to be able to count if only that so at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty," Ryou quoted wisely. But then the Brit's face dimmed, shyness overtaking him. "Um... Yugi."

The smaller boy turned to face his shy friend. "Yeah?"

"Do you want to hang out after school? I don't have anything to do." Ryou knew that he was sealing his own fate, and that this would only make the Spirit angrier than he already was with him. But, besides that... he needed friends.

Yugi smiled, showing off white teeth. "Sure, Bakura."

* * *

2nd Draft, May 6 

by Sour Schuyler


	2. Yugi Pt 2

_**Friendship**_

_**by Sour Schuyler**_

_**5.7.6****

* * *

**__"Creams puffs are puffs of cream," Ryou stated flatly. "You cannot honestly tell me that you've never had a cream puff?"_

* * *

Friend #1

Yugi Motou

Part 2

* * *

Ryou let out a swoosh of breath. "Ok," he said nervously. "Bye then." He then swiftly left the library, Miho Nosaka raising her eyebrows at him and telling him not to walk so fast. 

"Bye Bakura," Yugi called after him. Miho scowled at him. "Sorry, Miho."

The lunch bell rang a few minutes later, and Yugi silently packed up his things and made his way out of the library. Ryou's panicky egress had given him cause to wonder about the Spirit of the Millennium Ring.

"I hope the Spirit isn't bothering Ryou," Yugi told the spirit of his own Sennen Item, who expressed agreement. "We might have to step in if he is… Well, you really."

"Yugi, are you talking to yourself?" Yugi blinked.

"Uh… no."

Miho adjusted the large yellow ribbon in her hair and blinked plainly at her friend. "Are you sure? I thought I heard you talking," she persisted.

"I-I wasn't talking," Yugi stammered, red plaguing his cheeks. He hugged his schoolbooks to his chest and rushed off.

"Oi! Yugi, please don't run!" she shouted after him. The librarian gave her a look. "Oh, sorry…" she apologized, embarrassed.

Miho grabbed her knapsack and headed into the hallway, where she could just make out Yugi's unruly crown of hair once before it was lost in the crowd of students heading back to their classrooms. Once she made her way into her room, she took her seat, and then decided to look at Ryou, whom she thought was very handsome.

A few minutes later, Ryou's pencil tip was hovering over a frustrating pop quiz paper that he vehemently wished would go away. How was he supposed to remember who Nobunaga's enemies were? All of them seemed to have fiercely long names…

**When did Oda Nobunaga die? **

"Uhhhh…" Ryou scratched his pencil tip along the edge of his paper, trying desperately to remember at least what century the daimyo had passed on during. His eyes peered deftly to the side without his conscience's permission, and a few seconds later he was penciling in the answer of '1582.'

Cheating was bad, Ryou knew, but now that he had already looked at Joey's paper, there really wasn't anything he could do about it anyway.

"Stop." Ms. Jono's voice was clear and sharp. "Ryou, collect the papers."

"Uh, uhm, yes ma'am." Ryou stood up clumsily and began to make his way around the room. Glancing at others' papers was fair game now that the quiz was over, he decided, and was both relieved and sickened to see that most people had written '1582' as well.

"Hey," Yugi said softly when Ryou reached his desk. He handed Ryou his paper and gave him a sympathetic grin. "That was hard," he murmured before Ryou passed him. Ryou nodded.

After Ryou had finished picking up all of the pop quizzes and had turned them in directly to his terrifying teacher, the class continued in the most boring way possible, with Ms. Jono refusing to talk to her students while she wrote notes on the board, and with the students copying them down. During this time, Ryou made a terrifying discovery: many people involved in Oda Nobunaga's life were not only surnamed Oda, but had names starting with the letter N. The poor boy didn't want to think on how he was going to keep the names Oda Nobunaga, Oda Nobutomo, Oda Nobuhide and Oda Nobumitsu separate. He leaned his head over his notebook and groaned. "Oh dear…"

"Joey Wheeler!" Ryou looked up, startled and afraid that the teacher had heard him groaning. "Joey Wheeler, wake up!"

Ryou looked to his right and sweat dropped when he saw the blonde boy snoozing next to him. "Ryou, would you wake him up, please?"

"Why me?" Ryou blurted. The teacher glared at him. "Um… sorry…" He reached over and tapped Joey on the shoulder. "Joey…"

"I can do it Ms. Jono," Tristan said, getting out of his seat.

"I think Ryou has things under control, Mr. Taylor," Ms. Jono said icily. Tristan didn't listen.

"No, really," he said, walking down the aisle of desks and cracking his knuckles. "Watch this." Stopping once he reached Joey and Ryou's aisle, he turned, grinned, and rapped Joey hard on the head.

"HEY!" Joey not only awoke, but rose to his feet at once and put Tristan in a headlock. "Tristan! Why I oughta—"

"You both have detention," Ms. Jono said simply, in a voice that sounded miffed and even a bit hurt that her students were behaving so badly. "Tristan, go back to your seat. Joey, stay awake. I'll be seeing you after school."

Joey groaned loudly. His teacher narrowed his eyes at him and declared that he'd have detention tomorrow, too. Ryou winced and tried to look as angelic as possible, which just made him look paranoid.

After their history lesson had finished, they went on to math, which Ryou didn't really have any problems with. Soon the bell rang to dismiss all of them. Ryou let out a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding. He stood up and packed his things into his backpack, turned and began to exit the classroom—only to bump into Yugi.

"Ryou," Yugi said, "you didn't forget that we were going to hang out together, did you?" The blonde's purple eyes sparkled teasingly. "After all, it was your idea."

Seto Kaiba snorted as he passed by. Yugi glanced at the passing boy's back, something indecipherable in his eyes, before turning back to his companion for the afternoon. "So, what did you want to do?" Yugi asked.

"I… I didn't forget," Ryou stated.

"Suuuure you didn't." Yugi smiled. Then, his smile vanished. "Wow, Ryou, you look wiped. Is anything wrong?" he asked, wondering if Ryou would confide to him about the activities of the Spirit of the Millennium Ring.

Instead, Ryou confessed something different. "The lesson was difficult," he groaned. Yugi blinked.

"You think so? What about it was difficult?" Yugi asked with concern. It was then Ryou remembered that Yugi was one of the top students in the class.

"Well," Ryou began, "everyone seems to be named Oda."

"Ryou…" Yugi gave the boy a bizarre look. "That's because they're all in the Oda _clan_."

Ryou winced, embarrassed. "Oh. Well, their names are difficult…"

"Yeah," Yugi said, gripping his backpack straps with both hands in a kiddy fashion, "all of them seemed to be named 'Nobu.'" He began to rattle them off on his fingers: "Nobunaga, Nobutomo, Nobu… uh, mitsu, Nobu…"

"-hide," Ryou helped. Yugi nodded.

"Right! And Nobuyuki." Ryou frowned. He didn't remember that one.

"Who's Nobuyuki?" he asked as they exited the classroom and made their way down the hallway.

"Oda Nobunaga's younger brother," Yugi explained. "The one that people began to side with when Nobunaga threw incense at his father's altar." Yugi sniffed. "I can't believe that Nobunaga's mentor committed seppuku because of that…"

Ryou nodded, although he didn't remember what Yugi was talking about at all. "We should study together, Yugi," he blurted.

Yugi smiled. "Ok! That sounds cool. It's not really fun to study alone…" Ryou pushed open one of the double doors of the school and held it while Yugi walked through it. "Thanks. Where did you want to go?"

Ryou blushed. He hadn't thought of anywhere. "Uh… I don't know."

Yugi looked at him. "Eh? Well… Why don't we go to Burger World then," he suggested, blushing for a reason that Ryou couldn't fathom. "Unless you aren't really hungry."

"Uh, well." Ryou nodded. "I guess food sounds good."

Yugi nodded, an embarrassed tremor in his smile. "Ok," he said. "Let's go then."

Ryou noticed Yugi's quickening pace. "Why such a rush?" he blurted.

"Uh…" was Yugi's most intelligent answer. Ryou followed the shorter boy curiously. Then, Yugi stopped suddenly.

"What's wrong?" Ryou asked, surprised at his classmate's abrupt stop. Yugi had just remembered that Tea didn't have a shift that day.

"Uh, nothing," Yugi lied. "So… is there anything else you didn't understand during the lesson?"

Ryou sighed. "Why was everybody named Nobu?"

"It was probably a hereditary thing," Yugi said. "I mean, I guess. Since it seems to flow through just about everybody in the clan. But I don't know. It seems stupid to me." Ryou nodded. They had just about reached the restaurant. "Oh, uh… crap." Yugi winced. "I think I forgot my money."

Ryou blinked. "Didn't you bring some to school?"

"What for?" Yugi asked. "I bring a boxed lunch to school. It's alright; I'm not that hungry…"

"I can buy you something, Yugi," Ryou suggested. Yugi gave him a look that told Ryou that Yugi wanted to say yes, but courtesy told him to say no. "It's alright."

"Okay!" Yugi said happily. A few minutes later they exited Burger World, both with small shakes and hamburgers.

"Hamburgers are my favorite food," Yugi said before taking a large bite out of the burger.

"Really? Mine is cream puffs," said Ryou.

"What are those?" Yugi asked, his mouth still full.

"Creams puffs are puffs of cream," Ryou stated flatly. "You cannot honestly tell me that you've never had a cream puff?"

Yugi gulped. "Oh," he said. "I should've guessed that… I'm sure I've had one… My grandma used to make cream puffs. That's right. Sorry, I'm spacey."

"What do you want to do now?" Ryou asked. Yugi took another bite and chewed it thoughtfully. Ryou took a sip of his shake will waiting for Yugi to finish.

"Let's go to Grandpa's shop," Yugi suggested. "I can pay you back."

"It's alright…"

"No, let's go," Yugi said, tugging on Ryou's sleeve. "We can probably find a cool game to play."

Ryou smiled. "Alright," he agreed. "That sounds enjoyable."


	3. Yugi Pt 3

_**Friendship**_

_**by Sour Schuyler**_

**_7.6.6_**

_Yugi, as they would say in anime, "sweat dropped." "Grandpa, quit that," he grumbled. "I have company…"_

Friend #1

Yugi Motou

Part 3

"I see Grandpa's been here," Yugi remarked with a grin as the two of them ambled at a moderate pace toward the building where Yugi lived with his family.

"How can you tell?" Ryou wondered curiously. Yugi pointed at the sidewalk in front of the building.

"Look at that and tell me you've seen a cleaner sidewalk," he challenged.

Ryou's eyebrows shot up. The sidewalk in front of the Kame Game Shop was scrupulously neat as far as sidewalks went, and although Ryou knew that Solomon Motou had no power over how neatly the concrete blocks were arranged, they seemed to be laid next to each other in a straighter pattern than those farther on down the street. Yugi laughed a little.

"What's funny?" Ryou asked.

"The way you look with your eyebrows drawn up like that," Yugi snickered. He offered no further explanation as he pulled open the glass door. As was the norm with most shops that depended heavily on a person being there to help the customer, a small bell rang to signal their arrival.

"Grandpa, I'm home," Yugi said in a practiced way that indicated that he had recited this phrase everyday for the larger part of his school-attending life.

"Welcome back!"

Solomon Motou was a man who was slightly shorter than his grandson, with gray bangs that were the same style as Yugi's, but with more gray hair pushing out on the sides of his head as well. Crowning his hair was an orange cap. He wore a pair of green overalls over a white shirt with long sleeves that encased the arms that waved at Yugi so sporadically. Ryou stared openly at the older man's display.

Yugi, as they would say in anime, "sweat dropped." "Grandpa, quit that," he grumbled. "I have company…"

"Hello Bakura," Solomon greeted Ryou. Ryou blinked in surprise. "I can see that you're much better after getting out of the hospital."

Ryou blinked. "Ah… Oh, yes…"

Ryou barely remembered his stay in the Domino Hospital that had taken place during Battle City. At any rate, the memories that he _did _have of Battle City were mostly unpleasant ones and he didn't really care to talk about them. Luckily, Yugi led him past the glass cases where trading cards and classic games were displayed. "Come on, Bakura."

Ryou blinked. "Oh, right." He followed the shorter boy through the door in the back of the shop, into a large storage room. The white-haired boy could feel a gasp welling up in the back of his throat. Board games and boxes were stuffed on two large shelves made of white plastic. Although each shelf only had two rows, they extended to the ceiling, and each row was crammed with what Ryou assumed were materials to be sold.

"Are you okay?" Yugi laughed again. "I know, it's a lot of games, isn't it? But the worst part about this room is that I can't play any of them unless Grandpa says so, or if it's a display model…"

Yugi led him up a short flight of metal steps and through another door to the second floor, where Yugi's family actually lived. As soon as Ryou stepped into the tiny hallway, from where one could see into the kitchen and the den, the most salient thing about Yugi's home leapt out at his eyes: its tidiness. The den, from what Ryou could see at his angle, featured a carpeted floor that was unblemished, a TV that might as well have been polished, and a couch that sported three large pillows that were set in place perfectly. In the kitchen, the only thing that was out of place was a wooden spoon, set on a blue counter that had been made to look as if someone had thrown flecks of black all over it. Ryou followed Yugi into the den, past the couch, and through a door that led the two of them into Yugi's bedroom.

Ryou's eyebrows shot up for the second time that day. The room wasn't at all what he would have imagined the Duel Monsters world champion's room to look like. It had obviously been decorated by his mom. The walls were painted a greenish-yellow that could look light blue depending on how the light fell on it; there was a long mirror in the corner of the room, merely propped up instead of set on the wall; a wooden frame that was pushed against the wall buttressed a mattress that offered a sickly yellow comforter and a green pillow; an abstract painting hung above the bed, with streaks of orange and red and black; there was a small nightstand with three shelves that held up a potted shrub; the carpet was a darkish blue.

Ryou gaped. "Welcome to my humble abode," Yugi sniggered.

"It's so _clean_," Ryou remarked. "The only thing that's mussed up is…"

"Yugi!" A voice called out from another room, "You left your clothes out on your bed! Please put them away!"

"Okay mom!" Yugi shouted back. He set down his small, blue backpack and quickly made his way to his bed, where a lot of shirts were strewn across the creased bedspread. Ryou looked around while his classmate jumbled all of the clothes together and threw them in a closet with such bizarre care that Ryou was sure he was sorting where he threw them.

"You wouldn't even know there was a game shop downstairs. Where are all your games?" Ryou eyed a 9x9 board in the corner.

"Oh, they're in the closet." Yugi gave him a large, cheesy grin. "Mom likes for everything to look neat, so she gave me the room with the biggest closet for me to store all of my stuff in. I'll show you in just a second." Ryou heard the sound of a drawer being shut, and then Yugi shut the door to his closet (which could be seen through the slants of the door). He walked over to where the 9x9 board was and opened a door beside it, and led Ryou into a closet that rivaled the size of Ryou's largest bathroom.

"This is nearly as large as your bedroom!" Ryou exclaimed. Yugi scratched the back of his neck, laughing embarrassedly.

"Yeah…" Yugi sweat dropped. "Well, there's a lot of games in there. We could play a video game if you like… Oh. There's a light switch." Yugi stepped in and flipped the switch. Ryou looked around. There were a few shelves stuffed with many video games, with rows of video games on top of others where there was no more shelf space. There were a lot of games that he didn't recognize; that was to be expected, he told himself, since Yugi was always looking for rare and interesting games to play.

"Uhm… do you have a computer?" Yugi nodded furiously and eagerly. Ryou sweat dropped. "Okay… what's this game?" Ryou picked out a computer game at random. Yugi squinted at it.

"_Tōhō Yōyōmu,"_ he read. "It's a bullet hell game. If you haven't played that type of game before, you probably won't be good at it…"

Ryou blinked. "Bullet hell?" he repeated.

Yugi nodded. "Yeah! It's a form of shoot-em-up style games. I'll show you." Yugi gently grabbed the game from Ryou's palm and left the closet, instructing Ryou to turn off the light and follow him.

In the den, Yugi loaded in the catridge. "Look somewhere else and it'll look cooler when you first look at it," he suggested. Ryou's eyes took in the impeccable den while waiting for Yugi to get ready to show him what type of game it was. Occasionally, he would hear Yugi clicking the mouse, or typing something in. ("Your den is so clean…" "Yeah. Grandpa gets pretty choleric if we spill anything. Mom goes kind of nuts about it, too." "Where's your Dad?" "Business trip." "Ah.")

"Okay, it's ready," Yugi announced. Ryou turned towards the screen.

Multifarous bubbles spewed across the moniter from a large cloud. In the background was a path with bushes lining either side of it. The right side of the screen was a black sidebar showing points.

"It's pretty," Ryou found himself saying. "What is it?"

"Those bubbles are the equivalent of bullets," Yugi explained.

Ryou's eyes widened. "_All _of them?" There were dozens of them on the screen. Ryou could only guess what some of the harder levels were like.

"Yep. You have to dodge 'em."

"_All _of them."

"Yeah. That's why it's called bullet hell. It takes a long time to get the hang of…" Ryou noticed that Yugi didn't very stressed as the bullets raged at his tiny ship.

"You've obviously mastered it pretty well." _Very impressive, _thought Ryou.

"Yeah. I play this all the time."

_Obviously, _thought Ryou. "You must be very talented."

"I guess."

"The screen's so… distracting," he commented. "And colorful."

"But all of _these _bubbles are the same color," Yugi pointed out. "In some of the other levels, it's like a rainbow."

"So you just dodge things?"

"Yeah. The game has an actual plot, but you kind of forget what it is after you get stuck on the levels so many times. Something about somebody preventing spring from coming."

"…These games actually _sell_?" Ryou could scarcely believe that anybody other than Yugi Motou or Seto Kaiba could comfortably play these games.

"Yeah! But I can see why you would doubt it. These types of games are made more for fun than for actual profit. They have a name for games like those; they're called dōjin soft. The soft is short for software. It's like a form of dōjinshi – self-published comics and stories – except they're video games." Yugi shut down the game. "Anyway, it's not really a type of game you'd play with friends." He smiled up at Ryou. "And since you're a friend, we should do something different!"

Ryou blinked. "A friend?"

Yugi blinked. "Uh, yeah. Like you. We're friends." Yugi smiled impishly at his friend. "Remember?"

Ryou smiled. "Now I do," he said.

"As if it's possible to forget someone with my type of hair," Yugi laughed.

"...Do you have Threads of Fate?" Ryou asked, suppressing a goofy grin that had a dreamy quality to it.

"Yes!" Yugi grinned happily. "I do! Hold on!" He rushed back into his room and came back with the case for a Playstation 1 game. Opening up a cabinet, he took out a PS1 and proceeded to plug it into the television.


	4. Spirit of the Puzzle

_**Friendship**_

_**by Sour Schuyler**_

**_7.6.6

* * *

_**

_Whatever residual smile was left on Yugi's face drooped. "…You really think my hair looks like that?" he asked defensively. Ryou laughed nervously._

* * *

Friend #2 

The Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle

Part 1

* * *

"I love this game," Yugi was saying. "I haven't played it in awhile… But it's awesome. Grandpa keeps complaining that the resolution is bad, but it's only a Playstation 1 game, after all, and its still really cool, and…" 

Ryou didn't _mean _to be rude; it was just that he'd never heard Yugi go off in such a rant about, well, anything before, really, and his automatic reflex was to tune out what he was saying, since people who rave about things usually repeat themselves at least twenty times.

"…and so that's why the Spirit and I were thinking about you. Has the Spirit of your Ring done anything lately?"

"_Huh_?" Ryou made the most unintelligent bleating sound known to man.

Yugi clucked. "You haven't been listening…" He pressed the Power button and scooted back a few feet, sitting on the floor. Ryou followed suit.

"What about my Ring?" Ryou asked, holding his hand over his chest and lightly skimming the contours of the metal under his shirt with his fingertips. He'd promised, one day a long time ago, that he would never wear it again… but he never did remember putting it on. It was just something perfunctory he did in the morning, like brushing his teeth.

"We were wondering about the Spirit of it," Yugi repeated. And then: "Do you want to play as Mint or Rue?"

Ryou opted to play as the shape-shifting lad Rue instead of the selfish ex-princess Mint. Yugi selected Rue's game, and the two of them were quiet while they watched the introductory cutscene, in which Rue's guardian, Claire, was killed by the evil and enigmatic Arm of Death. Ryou felt cold creep up and down his arms, leaving goosebumps.

"…"

As Rue promised to find a way to revive the woman he looked upon as a sister, Ryou became aware that Yugi was looking at him.

"What's wrong?" he asked when the cutscene had ended.

Ryou decided to deliberately ignore the inquiry, no matter how sincerely concerned Yugi looked. "From what I can tell," he said, "Rue is upset because his guardian, Claire, died. Isn't that an interesting name? 'Rue'? And 'Claire' means light in French."

"Bakura…" Yugi stood up, frowned at him. Of course, Yugi standing up wasn't exactly threatening if you were standing up. And still, with Ryou sitting down, Yugi still wasn't very tall. But he had a gleam in his eye that let Ryou know that he wasn't going to let Ryou leave without some sort of information.

Ryou sighed, looking at the screen, at Rue, the boy who Yugi had seemed to have already forgotten, despite being so excited about the game just previously.

"Yugi…" He bit his lower lip. "Yugi, I really don't feel comfortable talking about the Spirit of my Millennium Item."

"Why not? If anybody's going to understand anything about it…" Yugi's eyes softened, "it's going to be me. I have a spirit dwelling within my Millennium Item as well, you know."

Ryou thought about it. It _was _technically true; Yugi would be the only one who could understand what it was like to have someone else living inside your pendant. "Well… he wouldn't like it if I talked about him," Ryou said swiftly. Yugi's eyes glimmered, and Ryou knew that he'd been just a little bit too hasty.

"You know, the Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle can probably help you if you're having problems with him." Yugi smiled. "'Free of charge,' he says."

"That's nice…"

Yugi smiled sadly. Suddenly, without Ryou noticing but not really seeing it, he got a bit taller. "Well," he said in a deeper voice, "I want you to know…"

Ryou looked up to see that Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle. He, who always knew what to say and always could vanquish his foes. Of course Ryou wanted his help. He just couldn't have it, was all.

"Yes?" he goaded, despite his whole head buzzing in fright.

"I just want you to know that I'm your friend, Bakura." The Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle smiled, a smile that wasn't Yugi's. His eyes shone wisely in a way that Yugi's usually didn't.

Ryou nodded. "I… Thank you," he said softly.

"What?" The Spirit actually blinked. "Sorry, I didn't hear you…"

"I said 'thank you,'" Ryou said, louder and with more confidence. "Thank you so very much, but I think I can handle him—the Spirit, I mean—on my own right now. He isn't being a real threat to me—and he hasn't hurt anybody yet, so…"

The Spirit nodded. "I just want you to know that you can talk to me and Yugi. Anyway…" He sat down. "So, what is this game that you and Yugi were playing?"

Ryou's eyes became owlish. "Uh… It's called 'Threads of Fate.'"

"I see." He picked up the controller, fiddled with it. "Ah, now Yugi's screaming at me to let him out. He wants to play the game…" The Spirit smiled. "You know what would really make Yugi scream?"

Ryou looked at the quondam ruler nervously. "What?" he asked, a bit unnerved by the devious smirk planted across the Pharaoh's face.

"If I made a comparison between him and Bes." Ryou blinked at him. "Bes, you see… well." Yugi's other half chuckled.

"Bes, to put it simply, is a supporter of Ra. Bes is a dwarf god."

Ryou flinched, as if he could sense how angry Yugi would be upon hearing this.

The Spirit of the Millennium Ring shrugged. "Then again, Bes was a demon, really. Supposedly he could strangle lions barehandedly. That's my partner, right? Totally."

Ryou blinked for the second time. "You sound quite weird, the way you say 'totally,'" he admitted. "And you're going to get in trouble, saying things like that."

Suddenly Yugi was standing in front of Ryou once again. He was looking _very _ticked off. "I am _not a dwarf!_" he screamed, seemingly at Ryou, although Ryou knew better. Ryou chuckled. "Gah… Bakura…" Yugi cringed, then wagged his finger at Ryou. "What he didn't tell you is, dwarves had important roles in Egyptian society! Especially religion."

"And childbirth," Ryou added. "I know that much."

Yugi blushed. "That would have to be the one you know… So!" Yugi sat down and picked up the controller. "A relic-searching we will go."

Ryou smirked. "Doesn't it seem odd to you, that Bes was most prominently a protector of the Pharaoh, and was short… and you, you're also short and you—"

"I've realized the irony in that," Yugi laughed. "But you know, Bes was also lion-like, and could scare the Pharaoh's of the enemies away…"

"Like your hair! It's kind of like a lion's mane."

Whatever residual smile was left on Yugi's face drooped. "…You really think my hair looks like that?" he asked defensively. Ryou laughed nervously.

"No, no…"

"…You know there was a god called 'Mut'?" Yugi smirked as his character shapeshifted into a Poliwog.

"I bet Kaiba would find that amusing," Ryou said.

Yugi looked spaced out for a minute, and then he said, "Yeah, that makes sense." A second later he was taller.

The former Pharaoh beamed. "Yugi gave me permission to talk to you," he said, "since I've never really done it before. Usually when I am in control of Yugi's body and you are near, it is because you… oh, fine, I'll tell him." The Spirit looked slightly cross. "The real reason I took over is so that Yugi couldn't tell you that Joey would not appreciate your comparison—'Mut' was the wife of Ra, who I'm supposedly related to."

Ryou blinked for the third time. And snickered. "Joey would make you a fine wife," he murmured. The Spirit growled just a bit. "Sorry!" Ryou yiped.

"No, it's okay Bakura," he assured the pale boy. "I'm here to help you."

Ryou sighed. "With my Ring problem, right?"

"If you could just tell me what Bakura's done lately…"

Ryou smiled at the Spirit. Suddenly, despite the warmth of friendship flowing through the room, he felt a chill. A warning, sent from the One who could hurt him the most…

"I'd really rather not talk about it, er—right now. Perhaps later…" A sting. "Or, really, I have everything under control…" His stomach muscles tightened involuntarily. After a few moments, Ryou found it hard to breathe. "I… I'm not… you see, I won't… egh…"

The Spirit's eyes flickered with obvious concern, but just then a piercing voice dissippated the impending drama.

"Yugi! It's a phone call! It's for you!"


End file.
